The fated day has come: If you’re nonetheless utilizing Home windows 7, 8, or 8.1 you may must improve to Home windows 10 or 11 quickly, as Valve’s massively well-liked digital storefront, Steam, not formally helps these older working programs.
Valve first revealed that it could drop help for older Home windows variations in a help web page posting final March. The message defined that as of January 1, 2024, Steam customers on Home windows 7, 8, and eight.1 will not obtain new shopper updates of “any variety,” together with safety fixes. Because of this, Valve is warning customers of those working system to improve “ahead of later” to keep away from malware and different malicious assaults.
Within the submit, Valve additionally defined that Steam Assist will not supply technical help for points associated to those older variations of Home windows. Valve can also’t assure that Steam will stay useable on these older OSs shifting ahead.
Nonetheless, to be clear, Valve isn’t flipping a change and killing Steam on Home windows 7. It’s simply saying that issues may begin to break quickly, and in the event that they do, they received’t get mounted.
“We count on the Steam shopper and video games on these older working programs to proceed working for a while with out updates after January 1st, 2024,” Valve wrote. “However we’re unable to ensure continued performance after that date.”
Why Steam is ending help for Home windows 7
Valve says one foremost cause for it reducing off help for Home windows 7, 8, and eight.1 is because of Google Chrome not supporting these older working programs. That’s an issue for Valve, as Steam depends on an embedded model of the browser. The corporate behind Half-Life and Portal additionally talked about that future variations of the Steam shopper will “require” Home windows options and safety updates solely present in Home windows 10 and 11.
Valve ended its submit encouraging gamers to improve to Home windows 10 or 11 quickly.
“Computer systems working these [older] working programs, when linked to the web, are vulnerable to new malware and different exploits which is not going to be patched,” Valve warned. “That malware could cause your PC, Steam, and video games to carry out poorly or crash. That malware can be used to steal the credentials on your Steam account or different companies.”
Whereas some of us may now be pressured to improve and even purchase a brand new PC to maintain taking part in on Steam, it appears affordable for Valve to maneuver ahead and go away behind Home windows 7, which was launched all the best way again in 2009. That’s a hell of a very long time on the subject of know-how, and Valve supporting that OS for almost 15 years is spectacular.
Nonetheless, if you happen to do improve to Home windows 10, get able to improve once more quickly as Microsoft is winding down safety help for that OS in October 2025. As somebody holding on desperately to Home windows 10, I’m counting the times.
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